


Canticle of a Lesser Sun

by moemachina



Category: Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken | Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword
Genre: Ecclesiology, M/M, canonical illness, reference to canonical suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:01:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25819252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moemachina/pseuds/moemachina
Summary: A year after the fall of House Cornwell, Lucius encounters a man whom he thought dead.
Relationships: Lucius/Raven (Fire Emblem)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 29





	Canticle of a Lesser Sun

It was an unremarkable afternoon in the early summer, and Lucius was performing an unremarkable chore -- sweeping away the fallen leaves on the temple steps, humming a little as he did so, thinking vaguely about the other tasks he must perform before the evening service -- when he heard a voice that made his heart suddenly drop into his stomach. 

The broom went still in his hands. He exhaled, squinting into the distance. _What-_

The voice spoke again, a low unintelligible rumble. It came from the far corner of the plaza, where a small group of men were walking. In the half-second before they turned a corner, Lucius glimpsed one man among them, taller than the rest, with hair the color of fire. 

Then the men were gone from view, and the plaza was silent again -- for a moment. 

The silence was broken by the clatter of the broom handle hitting the temple steps, followed by the steady thumps of Lucius' sandals against the plaza's flagstones.

"Lord Raymond!" he cried, or tried to cry, but he was out of breath from his sprint, and it came out as a dull croak. "Raymond!" 

The plaza was wide, and by the time he had reached its other side and turned the corner, the small group of laughing men had crossed a street and were on the verge of crossing another. 

"Raymond!" Lucius cried desperately, and this time his voice carried, and the five men slowed down to look back at him in confusion. There was five of them, all dressed in dull leathers and all prominently carrying the tools of their trade: swords, bows, maces. They were soldiers, then, or mercenaries, or guards -- only (as Lucius' galloping thoughts caught up with him) they could not be guards, because Lucius knew all of Lyndis' castle guards. And if they were soldiers, they would be wearing their company colors. 

They were mercenaries, then. 

Lucius came to a stop, breathing heavily, in front of them. "Sorry! Thank you! I didn't mean--it's just, it's you, Lord Raymond! You're here! I don't--They told me you were dead!" 

All five of the men stared at him blankly. 

Panting, Lucius could feel a familiar tightness creeping across his chest. "My lord?" he tried again, faltering slightly under the red-haired man's unwavering expression. 

The other man frowned. "You are mistaken. I am neither Raymond nor your lord." 

One of his companions snickered and nudged him. "Come on, Raven. What's wrong with being Raymond for a few hours? Hell, if you don't want her, I'll be Raymond for a few hours! I mean, just look at her! All that hair!" 

The other men laughed. 

The red-haired man rolled his eyes. "You can do what you want, Stief, but I'm afraid you're in for a surprise." He turned to continue walking down the street, and over his shoulder, he said in a bored tone, "Look at the robes. That's a monk of Elimine. Celibate _and_ male." 

The other man paled. "Begging your pardon, your grace," he said, awkwardly bowing and tugging at the brim of his straw hat. 

Under other circumstances, Lucius would have bowed even deeper and corrected the man -- _I am a mere acolyte, certainly not anyone's grace, and no one should think to show me deference, for after all, to be devoted to the Blessed St. Elimine's service was to be devoted to humility, please sir, do not waste a second apologizing to someone like me, as lowly as a worm, as inconsequential as a breeze_ \-- but on this one occasion, he barely heard the man. He was staring at the red-haired man's broad back. 

The other men nudged one another and nodded briefly at Lucius before they turned to follow their leader. 

Lucius stood there for a long, endless moment, but the red-haired man did not look back. 

The group of mercenaries turned a corner and were lost to sight. 

Lucius remained standing in the middle of the street. His feet were unsteady beneath him. His mouth was dry. There was an iron band tightening around his chest. The world was beginning to spin around him. 

He managed to stagger to the side and collapse in small degrees against the wall of a building. It barely hurt at all by the time he reached the ground. For a minute, he simply lay in a sad heap of robes and panted heavily -- but now he could feel bystanders and shopkeepers beginning to look at him, so he laboriously pushed himself into a sitting position and drew up his knees and put his head between them. He folded his hands behind his neck. He focused on breathing. He focused on counting to ten. 

Lucius felt the attention of the people on the street lessen and drift away from him. After serving at the temple for nearly a year, he was a familiar face in this quarter -- and his "fits" and "attacks" were no less familiar. The people around here were used to seeing him collapse; they were used to seeing him huddle and wait until he recovered his strength and could stagger home.

Lucius sat there, head bowed, face hidden beneath his arms. He did not wipe away the tears that ran down his nose and dripped to the dusty flagstones beneath him. After a while, the tears stopped coming, and the world stopped spinning, and he found he could breathe easily once again. 

When he was able, he pushed himself to his feet, moving like an elderly man. He went back the way he had come. He did not look in the direction that the red-haired man and his companions had gone. 

The plaza remained enormous and empty. The temple remained unmoving and silent. The broom he had dropped lay still against the steps.

  


* * *

  


Lucius floated through the rest of the day. He felt almost nothing: no hunger, no curiosity, no anger, no sorrow. This was not unusual. A feeling of numb detachment often followed one of his attacks.

During the evening services, he was barely sensible of the priest's chant, but he had assisted in temple services so often that he knew, even without instruction, when he should bring forth the consecrated chalice or light a sacred candle. He performed his assigned tasks flawlessly; over and over, he distantly watched his own hands grasp the base of the cup or tilt a candle flame toward its brother's wick. 

Once, surfacing from the deadened aftermath of one of his attacks, Lucius had gone in anguish to the bishop. The rites performed in the temple should not be empty, should not be hollow, should not be _automatic_ , he said. Normally, to assist a priest in the evening temple services filled Lucius with a sense of profound and ineffable serenity. What did it mean for Lucius to perform the same services while feeling dead inside? What is the purpose of a practice if the practitioner sleepwalks through the steps? 

The bishop had stroked his chin and said, _Lucius, my son, would you say that a blind man cannot be a priest, even though he cannot read the sacred missal?_

Lucius had scuffed his feet under his hard wooden chair. No, he had murmured. 

_Would you say that a deaf man cannot offer the morning services of St. Elmine, even though he cannot hear the bells marking out the time?_

Lucius' shoulders had slumped forward. My lord bishop-, he began. 

_Would you say that a maimed man cannot perform a baptism, even though he cannot hold the salt nor pour the water with his own hand?_

Lucius had bowed his head in defeat. No, my lord bishop, he said, outwardly meek and obedient, inwardly despairing. The problem was not the body, he wanted to tell the bishop, even as he rose and accepted the bishop's blessing and allowed the bishop's secretary to usher him out of the room. The problem was the spirit.

But Lucius had not said these things to the bishop, and so he continued to assist at temple services -- as he did tonight -- even when the aftermath of one of his attacks rendered his assistance unfeeling and ineffective and (he suspected) almost unholy. 

The priest made another far-off invocation, and Lucius looked out at the scattered people sitting on the benches before the altar-- and nearly dropped the chalice. 

The red-haired man was sitting in the back of the temple. His face was expressionless. He was looking at Lucius, not the priest. 

The priest, reaching to accept the wobbling chalice, gave Lucius a puzzled look, and Lucius dropped his gaze to the ground and mutely stepped back to his accustomed place behind the altar. 

When -- after a long moment -- he looked back up, the red-haired man in the back was gone. 

The priest lifted his arms, and his voice rang out in a final benediction, each word as loud as a thunder clap. 

Lucius' hands were still trembling. He no longer felt as though he was standing underwater. He no longer felt numb and detached. 

It was Lucius' responsibility -- once the seated worshipers had collected their belongings and filed out the front doors, once the priest had grumblingly pulled off his vestments and stomped off in the direction of the refectory, where a hot dinner was waiting for him -- to clean the chapel. On this night, as always, he cut away the melted wax from the base of the candles. He poured the water from the chalice into a small bucket; then he wiped dry the chalice and placed it in its designated cupboard. He folded the altar cloth into a neat square. He straightened the benches. He made sure the windows were shut and secured. He made sure the front doors were bolted. 

And even as he did these deeply familiar tasks, his mind alternated between two thoughts, repeated endlessly, over and over, like a dog chasing its own tail: 

_Am I imagining him?_

_Has he come back from the dead?_

He picked up the bucket of formerly consecrated water and opened the chapel's back door, which led into a small courtyard containing the temple's vegetable garden. 

Lucius paused. 

The red-haired man was sitting on a bench next to the garden. 

"Hello, Lucius," he said.


End file.
